The nexus between transport and land use has been a longstanding focus of interest for city planners, in terms of understanding patterns of mobility, their combinational impact on city’s sustainability, and determining the need for appropriate transport infrastructure ensuring planning frameworks optimise the benefits to local communities, the wider city transport networks and future investment. In recent years, interest in maximising the strategic synergies between infrastructure expenditure and urban growth and sustainability, development and renewal has become increasingly framed by the notion of 'city building'. The reassertion of strategic planning interests in the role that urban infrastructure projects play in 'city building' are acting to reposition the role of the planner, and demand a range of skills that help tie these large financial (and political) commitments more coherently to considerations of city sustainability, productivity, efficiency and equity. This course introduces students to the centrality of transport and infrastructure considerations both within strategic and statutory contexts. The ongoing pipeline of major transport infrastructure projects in Australian cities offer an excellent lens through which to consider the increasingly integrative role planners play in key city shaping activities which have social, economic and environmental as much as mobility outcomes.
